Unable to open F: drive, "Application Not Found" error

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Recently, I've been unable to access my F: drive. When I double click on the drive I get en error that says "Application Not Found". I can, however right click on the drive and open it that way, it's just extremely annoying. It doesn't matter what device is set as the F: drive, be it a UBS drive, a virtual drive, or a CD/DVD drive, it gives me the same error. At first I thought maybe there was something wrong with my USB drive, but if I use the same USB drive as E:, G:, H: etc. it works perfectly fine. The problem seems to lie specifically with F: drive itself. I've run all my virus scans (Norton and Malwarebytes) as well as PC Tools Registry Mechanic and found nothing. I even restored my system to about a week ago with no results. Any help would be appreciated.
 

TrainableMan

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Does the problem persist even after you reboot your computer?

Does it specify WHAT application is missing?

Are you double clicking on this drive letter in Windows Explorer or in what product specifically?
 
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yes, the problem persists after rebooting, it does not specify the application, and yes im in windows explorer.

I did come across something interesting though. I previously installed Flight Simulator X using either MagicISO or PowerISO as a virtual drive. At that time, I believe that I installed it using the F: drive as the virtual drive. Im going to attach a couple pics, one is of a USB drive as any random drive, and the other is a UBS drive as the F: drive. When I right click, my options are different. With the F: drive, the default action is "install or run a program from your media", as well as install direct X and install flight simulator. Could the fact that I installed flight simulator on the F: drive be messing it up? keep in mind all of my virtual drives are unmounted. How do I change the default action on the F: drive back to "open" like the other drives?
 

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TrainableMan

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Even though it is unmounted it is likely still reserving the drive letter, just like a real DVD drive is still there even when there is no disk inside. You need to reopen the drive emulator and "remove virtual drive".

Mounting and unmounting is like loading a DVD and ejecting the DVD respectively. Adding a SCSI drive and then removing the virtual drive are analogous to installing a new DVD drive into the computer and to yanking it out respectively.
 
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I forgot to mention, when I took those pictures all of my virtual drives were also completely disabled. The only drives in my windows explorer were my hard drive (C), my CD/DVD drive (D) and the 2 USB drives (E and F). For some reason even though my virtual drive is disabled, the flight simulator is still trying to retain the F drive, no matter what device it may be, for its own evil purposes..... if that is in fact the problem.
 

TrainableMan

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Well very often programs do remember the drive letter where they were installed from; you can see this often with registry entries but I don't know how THAT could block the drive from functioning normally in windows explorer.

I suspect something is still being loaded in memory to use the F: drive. If you used PowerISO I can believe that easily because I just tried it over the weekend and even after I uninstalled the crap it still seemed to have hold of the drive letter.

But at this point I don't really know. I would try removing your USB drives, then reboot, bring up your virtual software, recreate some SCSI drives so you get a virtual F: and then remove them again, run msconfig and make sure the virtual software isn't loading anything into memory, reboot, then reinstall the USB drives and see if you have any luck.
 

davehc

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Have you tried (should it be installed?) uninstalling Flight simulator. That looks to be the only problem. Direct x would, I guess, be linked to it.
 
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I HAD THE SAME ISSUE FOR MY F: DRIVE WHICH IS FOR MY SD CARD SLOT

I FOUND THE SOLUTION BY DELETING THE REGISTRY KEY/AUTO RUN F:
Item: 170 HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2
Description: F
Path: F:\Autorun.exe
MD5: NA
Registry path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2\F
 
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THANK YOU

I HAD THE SAME ISSUE FOR MY F: DRIVE WHICH IS FOR MY SD CARD SLOT

I FOUND THE SOLUTION BY DELETING THE REGISTRY KEY/AUTO RUN F:
Item: 170 HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2
Description: F
Path: F:\Autorun.exe
MD5: NA
Registry path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2\F


THANK YOU OMG THAT WORKED!!
 
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John

Thank you so much ddlordy for your simple straightforward answer. I worked on this for 3 days with no luck until I tripped upon your answer.
It is indeed so difficult to get an answer on editing registry but I got about 1000 redundant useless answers to try other methods. We need more like you.
Where in the world did you find such obscure information? Thanks, John
 
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I had the exact problem when inserting my SD card: "E:\Application not found" . I could none the less open and read my Sd card through My computer. I solved the problem going to Start - Control Panel - Autoplay - and chose: "ask me every time" for Pictures, which was set to "Import with Lightroom". Somehow that was causing the problem. After that, no more error. So check which programs are set to open your SD files, cause they might be responsible for this issue. Hope this helps some of you.
 

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